The Pala judicial first class magistrate court committed the Kerala nun rape case to the Kottayam principal sessions court to commence trial. The principal sessions court can either hear the nun rape case directly or it can transfer it to any of the additional district courts.

Kottayam: The judicial first class magistrate court in Pala, Kottayam, has committed the Kerala nun rape case to the Kottayam principal sessions court to commence trial. The court decided to transfer the rape case after defendants agreed that they were satisfied with the copies of the documents.

There are two options lying before the principal sessions court. It may either hear the nun rape case directly or it can transfer it to any of the additional district courts. Though the investigation team had already submitted the charge sheet in the Pala court, it transferred the case to the principal sessions court.

According to sources, the procedures to transfer the case were delayed after the counsel of the accused suggested that documents handed over by the prosecution were not legible. After this, the court asked the prosecution to hand over new copies. In the earlier sitting, the court noted that the case could not be delayed further and asked the defendant to submit his final opinion in the next sitting.

After this, differences were found in the contents of the DVDs submitted by the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in the court and the investigation team too reportedly had problems. Regarding this, the investigation team collected a fresh copy of the DVDs from FSL and handed them to the defendants through the court.

Five nuns from a convent in Kottayam Kuravilangadu seminary staged a protest on September 8, last year, in front of the Kochi high court against former bishop Franco Mulakkal, who has been accused of raping a Kerala nun multiple times between 2014 and 2016. If Mulakkal is found guilty, he may get life imprisonment or minimum imprisonment of not less than ten years, say police sources.